Resum:

My PhD dissertation concentrates on the theoretical analysis of the way monetary and fiscal policies should be conducted in the European Monetary Union (EMU) accession countries. Importantly fiscal and monetary policies in these countries are required to satisfy the membership requirements of the EMU summarized in the Maastricht Treaty. My interest lies in identifying the implications of different monetary and fiscal policies on the compliance with the Maastricht criteria. I characterize the optimal monetary policy and also optimal interaction between monetary and fiscal policy in the EMU accession countries. I study how the Maastricht criteria affect the design of optimal policies and their ability to stabilize business cycle fluctuations. In order to address all these issues I perform the whole analysis in the framework of a two-sector small open economy model incorporating frictions such as price stickiness and distortionary taxation. The model is calibrated to match the moments of the Czech Republic economy.
In Chapter 1 I study the ability of different monetary regimes to satisfy the Maastricht convergence criteria. I analyze regimes that reflect the policy choices observed in the EMU accession countries, i.e. a peg regime, a managed float and a flexible exchange rate regime with CPI inflation targeting. I find that there exists a significant trade-off between compliance with the CPI inflation criterion and the nominal interest rate criterion. Under the benchmark parameterization none of the regimes satisfies all the criteria. The sensitivity analysis reveals that the probability that some of the regimes will satisfy all the criteria increases with openness of the economy and degree of substitution between home and foreign traded goods. However the ultimate choice of the regime which satisfies all the criteria depends on the degree of exchange rate-pass through.
Chapter 2 focuses on characterization of optimal monetary policy for EMU accession countries in the framework of the already developed model. I find that the optimal monetary policy in a two-sector small open economy should not only target inflation rates in the domestic sectors and aggregate output fluctuations, but also domestic and international terms of trade. Under the chosen parameterization optimal monetary policy does not satisfy the CPI inflation and the nominal interest rate criteria. The optimal constrained policy induces smaller variability of the CPI inflation and of the nominal interest rate. At the same, it is also characterized by a deflationary bias which results in targeting CPI inflation rate and nominal interest rate that are 0.7% p.a. lower than their equivalents in the reference countries.
In Chapter 3 I incorporate fiscal policy by endogenising tax and debt decisions and restricting taxes to only distortionary ones. I find that targets of the unconstrained optimal monetary and fiscal policy are similar to those of the optimal monetary policy alone. Under the chosen parameterization, the optimal policy violates three Maastricht criteria: on the CPI inflation rate, the nominal interest rate and deficit to GDP ratio. Since monetary criteria play a dominant role in affecting the stabilization process of the constrained policy, CPI inflation and the nominal interest rate are characterized by a smaller variability at the expense of a higher variability of deficit to GDP ratio. The constrained policy is characterized by a deflationary bias which results in targeting the CPI inflation rate and the nominal interest rate that are lower by 1.3% p.a. than their equivalents in the countries taken as a reference. The constrained policy is also characterized by targeting surplus to GDP ratio at around 3.7%.